Saturday's Letters: Budget could be opportunity for region as jobs head North

My main concern is that these relocation plans should have been adopted more forcibly some years ago, as the potential movement of civil servant jobs from London in 2007/2008 could have helped distribute more public sector departments across the region; benefiting both

residential and commercial property markets.

The low points in the region's property cycle are usually heralded by a certain amount of local and central government activity taking advantage of the opportunity to resolve office space requirements at relatively attractive rents. This did not happen.

I have to remain cynical that the Chancellor's plans will come to fruition. Sir Michael Lyons's review back in 2003 hardly resulted in the opening of Whitehall's gates with a pilgrimage of many civil service jobs north. Evidently, around 84,000 civil service jobs are currently based in more expensive London offices.

As a property professional and a taxpayer, this quite simply needs addressing properly and soon.

I appreciate any major relocation is not going to be without its challenges and the Government's plans are already been opposed by the trade unions. If such a relocation programme is going to happen, the Leeds City Region must get its voice heard by Whitehall.

The Leeds City Region has some fantastic Grade A office space available and some centrally located and very deliverable sites.

Leeds offers great value for money in terms of office space and staff costs and, with access to major learning facilities as well as good transport links in to the capital, it needs to really punch its weight; especially given the inevitability that it will not be the only region seeking to entice government posts away from London.

It is now incumbent on us all to push Yorkshire into the limelight even harder than before, play to our region's strengths and influence Whitehall's decision makers while the opportunity is there.

From: Jeff Pearey, Director – Head of Leeds Office, Jones Lang LaSalle Ltd, St Paul's House, Park Square, Leeds.

From: Nick Martinek, Briarlyn Road, Huddersfield.

IT seems that either Alistair Darling and Gordon Brown have very short memories, or they expect the rest of us to be equally forgetful.

In his last Budget, on March 21, 2007, Chancellor Gordon Brown said: "... in Britain we expect debt from 2007-08 to 2012 to be 38.2, 38.5, 38.8, 38.8 and 38.6 per cent – at all times meeting our second fiscal rule... And we will never return to the old boom and bust."

So when Alistair Darling claims in the current Budget, that Labour "has been right about the recession", he actually means Labour was wrong on the recession.

Just six months after Mr Brown was patting himself on the back, Northern Rock failed in September 2007. This was the start of the "bust" that Mr Brown promised he had eliminated. And far from having debts of under 39 per cent, the UK already has about twice that with the debt looking set to rise to around 100 per cent of GDP.

Our children will be paying off Gordon Brown's debt for decades.

From: Phil Hanson, Baildon, Shipley.

Once again, Gordon Brown and Alistair Darling have treated the nation with contempt.

The Budget merely kicks the ball into the long grass to avoid the cuts needed until after the elections. Rather than saving their skins, we should have a government that puts the nation first.

The cynical style of New Labour with several shamed Ministers, aided by the unelected and unelectable Peter Mandelson, really has reached new depths.

Israel is alienating its friends

From: John Watson, Hutton Hill, Leyburn.

I have always been an ardent supporter of the state of Israel ever since its inauguration in 1948. I have supported it through all the Israeli/Arab skirmishes including those involving the Gaza Strip.

I have refused point blank to contribute to any appeals for the Palestinians in Gaza and always thought that their fellow Arabs in the oil-rich states should have been responsible for such benevolence. The Gaza people voted into power the terrorist organisation Hamas whose sole aim is, and always has been, the destruction of the state of Israel.

However, I am beginning to have second thoughts. We can't have Mossad cloning passports from, believe it or not, friendly countries. We can't have the same organisation assassinating one of their enemies in his hotel room in broad daylight. That is an act of terrorism, and we can't universally condemn such behaviour by one nation and condone it in another, even if by an ally.

Now the US, Israel's biggest benefactor, is not happy about new

dwellings being erected in East Jerusalem.

Israel's Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, who has always been a right wing bigot, had better watch out, it is only the Jewish lobby in the States that is keeping America onside.

Israel, isolated as it is in the Middle East, and surrounded by hostile states, needs all the friends it can get, but unless it behaves in a more civilised way and appreciates all the backing it gets from its allies, it is going to lose all sympathy in its struggle to maintain the status quo.

Proud to be a rambler

From: Bill Heppell MC, Rawcliffe Lane, York.

I CANNOT let RP Hodgson's unpleasant letter about the Ramblers' Association go unanswered (Yorkshire Post, March 19).

I recall my grandmother telling me how her family spread lime on the White Horse of Kilburn over a hundred years ago. I have been a member

of the Ramblers for over 60 years and proud of their achievements in getting access to the countryside for millions of townspeople in spite of opposition from the Countryside Alliance and their ilk.

As RP Hodgson quotes his credentials as an ex-military man, I started my rambling in 1944 with SOE with Tito's partisans and then in the mountains of Northern Greece. I was serving with 5 Para in Gaza when the 1945 election took place and a Labour Government was elected in the hope of a fairer society; this government was responsible, by the urging of its rambling MPs, for the Access to the Countryside Act which gave us our National Parks and our wonderful network of public footpaths and bridleways.

Unfortunately, New Labour has lost the plot.

I have walked almost every public footpath in the Howardian Hills and North York Moors and have always had cordial relations with farmers; after all, most of us are from farming stock three or four generations ago.

The Ramblers will continue to protect the right of ordinary families to walk in our lovely countryside and admire the diligence of the farming community.

Cameron must act over quangos and the EU

From: John Richmond, Harrogate Road, Ripon, North Yorkshire.

I WAS interested to read Don Burslam's comments regarding David Cameron's visit to Leeds to answer questions from Yorkshire Post readers (Yorkshire Post, March 22).

I, too, attended and while agreeing about the fluency of David Cameron and, in one or two cases, his straightforward approach. I did get the opportunity to ask a question on the existence of "quangos".

I was disappointed with his reply. While he gave an assurance that all quangos would be looked at and would be required to justify their position, I was amazed that he hadn't the guts to say outright that some of them would be disbanded forthwith.

Surely, the Conservatives by now have looked at the massive waste created, often by local authorities and quangos together, a make-up of red tape and bureaucracy forced upon us, the public. A clear message needs to come before the election that much of the unwanted regulation will be swept away by the Conservatives. Figures have been published recently by the media of some of these unelected bodies and their unbelievable cost – or waste.

I was disappointed that David Cameron hasn't got a list of them. Better still, to quote Gilbert & Sullivan's The Mikado: "I've got them on the list, they'll surely not be missed."

From: D Wood, Thorntree Lane, Goole.

WITH regard to the letter from Mr Burslam (Yorkshire Post, March 22), the only thing exceptional about Brown, Cameron and Clegg is their joint mediocrity.

We have here three men who would like to be Prime Minister of Great Britain. Yet if any of them are elected, they will be quite happy to let a shower of unknown, unaccountable, unelected and unsackable foreigners in Brussels tell them how to run our country – at great expense to us – by supplying them with around 80 per cent of our laws.

Mr Burslam says that the Prime Minister's job is awful and we should be grateful that someone is prepared to do it; I can't see any reason to be grateful to anyone who denies us our democratic right to say who should govern our country.

We can always remove those at Westminster, but we have no say

whatsoever over who lords it over us at the EU.

Until all our laws are made in Britain and nowhere else but Britain, then nothing of any importance can be changed, and our country will continue its downward spiral.

Weakest link always suffers

From: Fred Henley, Seaton Ross, York.

AS a small-scale pig farmer, I have to take the price offered by big buyers for my pigs. At the beginning of the pig crisis, the large processor I was selling to reduced my price significantly to the extent that a small profit turned into a big loss .

The reduction was immediate and no account was taken that it takes nearly a year to alter how many pigs are produced. I believe a main reason for this was their biggest customer, a supermarket, demanded lower prices so the weakest link – the farmer – suffered most.

I am in favour of anything such as an Ombudsman that will give the farmer a fairer deal (Yorkshire Post, March 23). I once worked out that one penny extra on a rasher of bacon passed back to the farmer makes a big difference to his profit and would hardly be noticed by the consumer.

Farming is a business. Without profit, there is no reason to produce food.

Glorious food

From: Doreen Illingworth, Belvedere Road, Bridlington, East Yorkshire.

WHAT memories were brought back when I read about June Wolfe's letter re Yorkshire puddings (Yorkshire Post, March 20). In the late '30s, I had an occasional meal at my school friend Kathleen's house. I can still see and taste Mrs Goodair's Yorkshire puddings, cooked in exactly the same way as Auntie Lily's – coal fire, side oven, square tin and gorgeous gravy. Food was food then.

Kathleen and I have remained lifelong friends.